Little Turtle is an experiment to teach a small aspect of programming (sequential steps) to elementary school students (kindergarten, 1st grade, ...). I have been impressed with how quickly they learn things.

The experiment is an extremely simple "turtle graphics" type program and is designed for kids just learning the alphabet and numbers. An adult or older student will need to help them get started.

There are many fine turtle graphics implementations available on the web. The problem is they require reading skills that younger students do not yet have.

Little Turtle is a webpage that uses JavaScript to interact with the user. It is not great JavaScript but it works (sort of). I will eventually need to recode it in more "correct" JavaScript (as soon as I learn how).

A zip file is available that contains the (almost) latest Little Turtle files. Remember this is very much a work in progress and things are clunky and rough around the edges.

Have fun playing with and modifying Little Turtle.

Note: Little Turtle Does Not Work With Microsoft IE. Use Firefox, Chrome, ...

Little Turtle Little Turtle Help Little Turtle Design Notes Little Turtle Limited Commands Little Turtle Extended Commands Little Turtle Zip File Little Turtle Cheatsheet Little Turtle Cheatsheet (limited) Little Turtle Cheatsheet (Extended) Little Turtle How-To Little Turtle Lesson Plan

Little Turtle - Draw a Spiral Little Turtle - Draw These Shapes Little Turtle Keyboard Little Turtle Keyboard Practice   (doc) Little Turtle Edit Practice Examples Example #1 Example #2 Example #3 Example #4 Example #5 Example #6